MicroStrategy 9 vs SAP BusinessObjects 4.1

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MICROSTRATEGY 9.4.1VS. SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.1
A comparison of key BI capabilities (July 2014)

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6,606,596, 6,658,093, 6,658,432, 6,662,195, 6,671,715, 6,691,100, 6,694,316, 6,697,808, 6,704,723, 6,741,980, 6,765,997, 6,768,788, 6,772,137, 6,788,768, 6,798,867, 6,801,910, 6,820,073, 6,829,334, 6,836,537,
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7,194,457, 7,197,461, 7,228,303, 7,260,577, 7,266,181, 7,272,212, 7,302,639, 7,324,942, 7,330,847, 7,340,040, 7,356,758, 7,356,840, 7,415,438, 7,428,302, 7,430,562, 7,440,898, 7,486,780, 7,509,671, 7,516,181,
7,559,048, 7,574,376, 7,617,201, 7,725,811, 7,801,967, 7,836,178, 7,861,161, 7,861,253, 7,881,443, 7,925,616, 7,945,584, 7,970,782, 8,005,870, 8,051,168, 8,051,369, 8,094,788, 8,130,918, 8,296,287, 8,321,411 and
8,452,755. Other patent applications are pending.
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MICROSTRATEGYVS. SAP BUSINESSOBJECTS – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
KEY CONSIDERATIONS MICROSTRATEGY
SAP
BUSINESS
OBJECTS
1.ARCHITECTURAL EFFICIENCY
a. METADATA ARCHITECTURE – Single, reusable and object-oriented metadata vs. multiple metadata silos STRONG AVERAGE
b. MULTI-SOURCE - MicroStrategy’s ability to combine different data sources vs. BusinessObjects’ restrictive multisource STRONG AVERAGE
c. SECURITY ARCHITECTURE – Centralized and easy to manage security vs. decentralized security STRONG AVERAGE
2. SELF-SERVICE (DATA DISCOVERY)
a. AGILE ANALYTICS – Business friendly self-service analytics and rapid dashboard development STRONG AVERAGE
b. SELF-SERVICE ARCHITECTURE – MicroStrategy’s fully integrated data discovery vs. BusinessObjects’ limited integration STRONG AVERAGE
3. ENTERPRISE-GRADE DASHBOARDS – Powerful design capabilities vs. limited dashboard experience STRONG AVERAGE
4. NATIVE MOBILE BI APPS – Native Mobile apps that users love vs. BusinessObjects’ limited mobile capabilities STRONG AVERAGE
5. PROACTIVE BUSINESS MONITORING AND ALERTING – Proactive monitoring vs. limited proactive monitoring STRONG AVERAGE
6.TRANSACTIONS AND WRITE-BACK – Actionable vs. non-actionable dashboards and mobile apps STRONG NO SUPPORT
7. OPERATIONAL REPORTING & DOCUMENTS – Ability to modify documents in Web vs. limited capabilities to modify in Web STRONG AVERAGE
8.ADVANCED INTERACTIVITY – Interact with different levels of data through prompting, drilling, and searching STRONG AVERAGE
9. PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY - Superior performance at scale vs. performance limitations at scale STRONG AVERAGE
10.ADMINISTRATION EFFICIENCY – Higher efficiency using administration tools vs. limited administration tools STRONG AVERAGE
11. DEPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY - BI on-premises or in the cloud STRONG AVERAGE
12. INDUSTRY ANALYSTS – Get unbiased perspective from one of the top industry analysts – BiScorecard STRONG AVERAGE
3

ARCHITECTURAL EFFICIENCY – METADATA ARCHITECTURE
MicroStrategy’s single unified architecture vs. BusinessObjects’ multiple interfaces architecture
1.a.
Other BI ToolsMICROSTRATEGY
MicroStrategy SAP BusinessObjects
1 Single Unified Architecture:
MicroStrategy’s BI platform is
organically developed from the
ground up without any
acquisitions. A single metadata,
server, and code base enables
centralized security and
administration as well as tighter
product integration.
Multiple User Interfaces:
BusinessObjects is a collection of tools
having two separate tools for
dashboarding, reporting, data discovery,
and architecture. Most of these tools are
not properly integrated with each other.
BusinessObjects’ portal is necessary to
combine different user interfaces
together since BusinessObjects reports
and reporting objects do not fully
integrate across their distinct tools, or
from their desktop to Web interfaces.
2 Highly Object-Oriented
Development and Object
Reusability: Reusability of
metadata components ensure
that the same analytic object is
used over and over at many
different places across many
reports and dashboards, and also
as building block to create other
analytic objects. Any change
made to the reusable metadata
components automatically
propagate to all dependent
objects ensuring easy and
automated change management.
MicroStrategy’s object-oriented
metadata contains the most
reusable objects including but not
limited to attributes, metrics,
filters, prompts, consolidations,
custom groups, reports and
templates.
Local Reporting Objects Not Shareable
Among Users: Many calculations,
conditions and prompts are typically
created anew for each new report and
cannot be easily used as building blocks
to build other reporting objects. Report
developers cannot create report objects
as stand alone and reuse them across
different reports creating redundant
work and too many objects that serve
the same purpose to maintain.
MicroStrategy offers a much superior metadata
architecture as compared to SAP BusinessObjects
5

ARCHITECTURAL EFFICIENCY – MULTISOURCE
MicroStrategy’s ability to combine different data sources vs. BusinessObjects’ restrictive multi-source
1 Enterprise-Wide View of
Information due to Multi-Sourcing:
MicroStrategy provides the ability to
combine data from different data
sources into an enterprise-wide
single version of the truth.
No OLAP-ROLAP Multi-Sourcing: Unlike
MicroStrategy, BusinessObjects cannot
create reports that get and combine data
from both of a relational and
multidimensional data source.
2 Seamless Navigation Across
Multiple Data Sources:
MicroStrategy’s unified multi-
dimensional business model allows
companies to create a single logical
view spanning multiple data sources,
making it easy to add any new data
sources. Users are able to seamlessly
drill across multiple data sources.
Insufficient Multi-Source Data Access:
BusinessObjects 4.0 introduced multi-
source universes. But this functionality
can only be used with relational data
sources. Furthermore, performance is far
from ideal because it does not leverage
the database and joins the results from
different data sources in-memory.
6
1.b.
Create a unified enterprise-wide
view from all your data assets

Enterprise-Class Security at Every Level of the BI Architecture
ARCHITECTURE EFFICIENCY – SECURITY ARCHITECTURE
Centralized and easy to manage security infrastructure vs. decentralized Security management
1 Centralized and Pervasive Security: MicroStrategy provides
centralized security administration across the entire platform.
Security can be managed for all reports and documents from a
single location.
De-Centralized Security: BusinessObjects security is often
defined in at least three tools: Universe Designer or Information
DesignTool,Central Management Console and BusinessView
Manager, increasing the chances of human error.
BusinessObjects’ two different data discovery tools require
redundant security and maintenance.This results in extra manual
work and spread-mart issues.
2 Object-Level Access Privileges: Administrators can assign
access control privileges (read, write, use, delete, execute, and
browse) on individual metadata objects like attributes metrics,
filters, custom groups, and others.
Limited Flexibility Setting User Privileges: BusinessObjects offer
administrators very limited granularity for setting group and user
privileges.This limits the control administrators have over user
access.
7
1.c.

SELF-SERVICE (DATA DISCOVERY) – AGILE ANALYTICS
Business friendly self-service analytics and rapid dashboard development
1 Integrated Self-Service over the Web:
MicroStrategy Visual Insight is Web-based, thus,
requires no separate installation before use. It is a
drag-and-drop interface that supports advanced
visualizations like Google map, network
visualization, waterfall, heat map, and micro charts,
thus, helping users efficiently display trends and
anomalies in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
Two Separate Data Discovery Tools with
Limited Integration: BusinessObjects has two
tools – SAP Lumira and BusinessObjects Explorer.
Explorer only supports visualizations with two
dimensions and up to three measures. Users have
no way of customizing these visualizations. The
other tool is Desktop client called Lumira, which
was released in May 2013 and currently only
supports a single visualization at a time. The only
way to have multiple visualizations is to create a
story board.
2 Business friendly Graphical Query Builder:
MicroStrategy provides a simple drag-and-drop
style graphical query builder. Business users with
little or no knowledge of SQL can easily define data
relationship and create their own data model
through the intuitive graphical interface.
Graphical Query Builder Not Provided: Neither
SAP Lumira nor BusinessObjects Explorer provide
a graphical interface to allow business users to
drag-and-drop data fields to define data
relationships while viewing the resulting data
model as a diagram.
3 Built-in Best Practices for Visual Exploration: A
number of visual exploration best practices
embedded within the product. For example,
visualization suggestion engine, auto geocoding,
auto time hierarchy creation, multiple shelf's like
color-by, and size-by for easy multidimensional
analysis.
No Built-in Best Practices for Visual
Exploration are Supported: BusinessObjects
does not support a visualization suggestion
mechanism in Lumira or Explorer.
4 Mobile Accessible Dashboards: Interactive
visualizations created in Visual Insight can be
viewed in any mobile device, thus, allowing the
users to interact with data on the go.
Visualizations available on Mobile Devices:
Starting version 4.1, the two mobile apps
(Explorer and SAP Mobile) have been combined
into one app. Now visualizations from both
Lumira and Explorer can be seen on the same
SAP Mobile app.
5 Data Blending Capabilities: MicroStrategy allows
the definition of a single visualization with
attributes/metrics feeding from multiple datasets
(reports/cubes) from within Enterprise Dashboards
and Visual insight. In addition, it allows joining
modeled and un-modeled datasets.
Limited Data Blending Capabilities: SAP Lumira
allows joining multiple data sources into a single
cube. However, unlike MicroStrategy, it cannot
join data between different cube data sources
into a single visualization. Explorer does not
support data blending capabilities.
Rapid data analysis and
dashboard creation
8
Graphical Query Builder for
easy data preparation
2.a.

SELF-SERVICE (DATA DISCOVERY) – SELF-SERVICE ARCHITECTURE
MicroStrategy’s Fully Integrated Data Discovery vs. BusinesObjects’ Limited Integration
9
1 Fully Integrated Data Discovery Utilizes Platform ACL’s:
MicroStrategy Visual Insight is fully integrated with the
MicroStrategy platform and provides the option to utilize the
existing schema layer. This ensures reusability of datasets and a
single version of the truth for all users. As a result, MicroStrategy
enables a managed self-service environment free of spread-marts
and data siloes. MicroStrategy Visual Insight automatically utilizes
users’ object-level access control privileges from the platform
security setup.
Partially Integrated Data Discovery: BusinessObjects’ two different
data discovery tools require redundant security and maintenance.
Duplicate access control privileges and object definitions create
multiple versions of the truth. This results in extra manual work and
spread-mart issues.
SAP Lumira is not integrated with BusinessObjects platform. While
Lumira supports Universes from versions 3.x and 4.x as data sources,
it does not use BusinessObjects’ security, privileges, permissions etc.
This is on the roadmap. Thus, users are left confused and concerned
as Lumira is fractured from the enterprise.
2.b.
Single Version of the Truth
DWH CubeCube DWH
Agility for business
Manageability
and consistency for IT

ENTERPRISE-GRADE DASHBOARDS
MicroStrategy’s powerful dashboard creation vs. BusinessObjects’ limited dashboard experience
1 Fully Integrated Dashboards with Powerful
and Flexible Design Experience: Developers
have exceptional flexibility to create highly
interactive, pixel-perfect dashboards. A number
of design capabilities such as WYSIWYG
interface, multi-tab and multi-layered layouts,
large number of selector controls for filtering
flexibility and performing targeted filtering,
information windows for contextual pop-ups,
dashboard linking and screen designing for
building workflows, fine-grained formatting
capabilities, and wealth of interactive
visualizations and widget controls provide a
flexible and powerful design experience.
Multiple Dashboarding Tools with
Limitations in Design Experience:
BusinessObjects currently sells two separate
but overlapping dashboarding products:
BusinessObjects Design Studio and
BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly known
as Xcelsius) forcing users to choose between
dashboards connecting to SAP HANA/BW
cubes or a relational database. The two
dashboarding tools are not integrated with
each other, thus, the dashboard created in
one tool, cannot be used/seen in the other.
Both the tools have limitations in certain
features such as no native drill controls, no
support for information windows, dashboard
linking for building workflows, and multi-
layered layouts, thus, providing a less flexible
and powerful design experience.
2 Automatic Drill-Anywhere: Users can
automatically drill through the full depth and
breadth of the data warehouse and obtain
detailed information.
No Automatic Drill Anywhere: Users can drill
up and down within a pre-defined hierarchy.
Users cannot drill outside a hierarchy or data
source to explore the entire DWH, thus,
limiting the drill experience.
3 Custom Dashboard Output: Powerful object
prompting capability generate custom outputs
depending on the selections made by the end
users during run-time.
Limited Custom Dashboard Outputs: Object
prompting is not supported. As a result,
BusinessObjects is limited in terms of
generating custom dashboard output at run-
time.
4 Actionable Dashboards: Users can not only
consume information but also initiate
appropriate actions (write-back) from within
the dashboards.
Not Actionable : Users cannot initiate write-
back actions from within the dashboards
interface.
Gain superior insights from content
rich enterprise dashboards
3
10

MicroStrategy Mobile Ranked #1
1 Mobile Ready Reports and Dashboards:
MicroStrategy allows users to run reports and
dashboards directly on their iPad, iPhone, or
Android devices. Because reports and
dashboards in the BI application do not have to
be re-authored for the mobile device, minimal
additional IT investment is required for mobile
deployment.
Limited Dashboard Features on the Mobile
Device: As of version 4.1, the two Mobile apps
(Explorer and Mobile) are now combined into one
Mobile app – SAP Mobile. Now dashboards
created in Explorer can be viewed on the SAP
Mobile app. However, any dashboards created in
prior version will not be supported. The Explorer
dashboard have to be created in version 4.1.
2 Deliver Multimedia Content Through Mobile
App: Deliver multiple forms of information
(PDF, Videos, ePub, Presentations, etc.) within
the same App.
Limited Capabilities to Deliver Multimedia
Content: BusinessObjects does not provide a
multimedia widget control like MicroStrategy. As
a result, the capability to deliver multimedia
content is limited.
3 Actionable Mobile Apps: Implement
transactional capabilities into the information
driven mobile apps.
Non-Actionable Mobile: BusinessObjects does
not provide out-of-the-box transactional (write-
back) capability.
4 Create Workflow-Driven Apps: MicroStrategy
Mobile provides high degree of design
flexibility to build multiple screens and
combining them into a single workflow-driven
app or dashboard.
Limited Flexibility to Create Custom Workflows :
BusinessObjects mobile apps provide limited
development flexibility to build intricate
workflows of multiple screens and combining
them into a seamless and intuitive dashboard
5 Deliver Rich Apps on Small Screen Devices:
Ability to do screen design and workflows
provide powerful capabilities to build apps for
small screen devices.
Limitations on Small Screen Devices: Due to the
smaller screen and lack of mouse-over capabilities,
certain components and dashboard features are
not supported on mobile devices.
NATIVE MOBILE BI APPS
MicroStrategy’s Native Mobile apps that users love vs. BusinessObjects’ limited Mobile capabilities4
11

PROACTIVE BUSINESS MONITORING AND ALERTING
MicroStrategy’s proactive monitoring to improves business efficiency vs. BusinessObjects’ limited proactive monitoring
MicroStrategy Distribution Services acts as a
proactive information radar for the enterprise
1 Mass Distribution of Personalized
Content (Report Bursting): Ability
to deliver personalized slices of
information from a single report to
a large number of users
Limited Report Bursting
Capability: BusinessObjects has
very limited dynamic distribution
list capabilities across the product
set.Therefore,Administrators
have to define fixed distribution
lists and cannot use conditions to
dynamically conform the recipient
list. Scheduling/Distribution of
dashboards is extremely limited.
2 Delivery of all Report Styles from a
Unified Platform: Users can
subscribe themselves or co-workers
to receive all reports available in the
MicroStrategy environment to a
wide range of output devices.
Alerting CapabilitiesVary byTool:
BusinessObjects lacks a consistent
approach to alerts with its tools.
For example,WebIntelligence and
Crystal Reports have different
alerting capabilities.
3 Personal ExceptionThresholds:
Business users can define personal
exception thresholds, for example,
send me the report when inventory
level falls below “x” units.This
capability allows users to set up
information radar to proactively
monitor their business processes.
Limited Exception Based
Thresholds: Crystal Reports does
support exception-based alerting.
However,WebIntelligence does
not.Thus, users using
WebIntelligence reports cannot
set up proactive notifications
based on threshold condition.
5
12

13
TransactionServices is fully integrated into
MicroStrategy’s organically grown platform
TRANSACTIONS AND WRITE-BACK
MicroStrategy’s Actionable dashboard and mobile apps vs. BusinessObjects’ non-actionable dashboards
1 DataWritten Back to the
Data Source: MicroStrategy
Transaction Services can not
only write back to the data
warehouses, datamarts, and
ERP/Operational Systems,
but also toWeb Services
Applications (like
Salesforce.com).
Not Supported
2 Multiple Formats of Data
Input Supported: Multiple
control styles for data input
are supported such as –
text/numeric fields, calendar
dates, time, binary values,
drop-down lists, slider,
steppers, switches, and
camera.
Not Supported
3 Transactional Mobile
Intelligence: MicroStrategy
supports business process to
be performed from a Mobile
transaction app without
using any traditional format.
Not Supported
6

Create Comprehensive, Interactive Reports in a Number
of Styles with MicroStrategy Enterprise Reporting
OPERATIONAL REPORTING AND BUSINESS DOCUMENTS
Pixel-perfect business documents like invoices & billing statements
1 Templates for Rapid Design:
MicroStrategy provides out-
of-the-box templates for
report design and the ability
to create custom templates to
decrease design time.
Limitations in Available
Templates for Report
Design: Template
functionality varies by tool.
BusinessObjects has two
tools for Operational
Reporting – WebIntelligence,
and Crystal Reports. Crystal
Reports have an online
catalog of report templates
that can be used as starting
point. But WebIntelligence
does not have the capability
to provide out-of-the-box
report templates.
2 Real-Time WYSIWYG Report
Design: Highly formatted
documents are built using
WYSIWYG report design and
formatting over a zero-
footprintWeb interface.
Limitations in Real-Time
WYSIWYG Report Design:
SAP Crystal Reports does
not offer web users a way to
edit and format the report
layout while viewing it, for a
real-timeWYSIWYG view of
their changes.The design
changes are done on the
desktop version, andWeb is
used just for consumption.
This increases the design
time due to unnecessary
iterations and design
frustration.
7
14

ADVANCED INTERACTIVITY
Interact with different levels of data through Prompting, Drilling, and Searching
1 Dynamic Report Personalization: Object prompts enable users to
dynamically select which report objects they want to see by authoring
the report set at runtime. As a result, a single report can span hundreds
of possible data combinations tailored to different user needs.
MicroStrategy displays prompt values and report content that are
permitted by the user's security profile. MicroStrategy prompts enable
different users to personalize the same report and give them significant
ad hoc capabilities.
Limited Dynamic Report Personalization: BusinessObjects offers
limited options for parameterized reports. Object or column prompts
such as selection of attributes, metrics, and filters on the fly are not
supported. This causes an unnecessary number of reports to be created
and maintained for end users.
2 Drill Anywhere: MicroStrategy users can drill anywhere in the entire
data warehouse or across multiple data sources for boundary-free
investigative analysis. Users can automatically drill within or across
hierarchies without pre-defining drill paths. They can also modify report
contents on-the-fly and further deepen the investigation by drilling
outside of an Intelligent Cube to perform OLAP analysis.
Lack of Automatic Drill-Anywhere: As of version 4.1, BusinessObjects
does not have automatic drill anywhere capabilities across reports. All
drill paths across cubes and across reports have to be manually defined
by IT or report developers.
3 Google-Like Search for Quick Data Access: MicroStrategy users can
not only search for reports and dashboards but also any other metadata
objects using auto-complete, suggested matches, and instant search
results with multi-level Google-like search capabilities. Granular object-
level search allows users to locate analytical objects easily, preventing
redundant object creation and promoting object reuse.
Limited Search Functionality: BusinessObjects allows search by
document attributes as well as content. It does have a quick search
functionality that only shows the top six results sorted by relevance as
the user types. There is no way to increase the number of search results.
In addition, the search needs to be done through the search toolbar.
BusinessObjects does have the capability to include a search selector
inside a dashboard, where users can search at run time.
8
15
Powerful Personalization Automatic DrillAnywhere Multi-Level Search

PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY
High scalable BI platform with superior performance9
16
Push-Down Architecture: MicroStrategy is widely recognized by industry
analysts & customers as a highly scalable enterprise BI platform.
MicroStrategy leverages the database to its fullest extent by pushing data
joins and analytic calculations to the database whenever possible.
Mid-Tier Centric Processing: Data joins across multiple sources, and many
calculations are performed at the mid-tier level resulting in unnecessary data
movement and poor utilization of database processing power.
High Performance Multi-Pass SQL: Multi-pass SQL queries provide greater
analytical power and minimize the amount of data that is pulled back to the
mid-tier. MicroStrategy’s SQL engine is one of the most sophisticated in the
industry and leverages multi-pass SQL in order to increase performance.
Limited Multi-Pass SQL Capabilities: BusinessObjects does not dynamically
generate multi-pass SQL. Therefore, it has limitations answering complex
questions in an efficient way by leveraging the database and analytical engine in
the middle-tier. Multi-stage calculations such as percentage to total, and
contribution metrics needs to be created at the report level.
Automatic Aggregate Awareness: MicroStrategy maximizes database
usage and enhances performance for every analysis by making use of
common data warehouse optimization techniques like aggregate tables and
table partitioning.
No Automatic Aggregate Awareness: BusinessObjects SQL engine does not
support automatic aggregate awareness, thus, unable to map a single attribute to
many fact tables and selecting the most efficient table to obtain the data during
run-time. This is more of a manual process where the aggregate logic has to be
coded in.
Parallel SQL Execution: Multiple passes of SQL can be executed in parallel
to improve query performance.
No Parallel SQL Execution: Multiple passes of SQL cannot be executed in parallel
to improve performance.
Push-down Joining Uses the DBMS Engine
Multi-pass SQL
Multi-dimensional
Business Model
Joins across databases
happen at the client
side
Minimum data
movement across the
network
Heavy data
movement across
the network
Push-down architecture to fully leverage database processing power MicroStrategy Top ranked Vendor in data
volume; SAP BO WebI rated below average
Source: The BI Survey 13 Normalized score relative to the weighted
average of 1.0; higher numbers indicate greater overall score.

ADMINISTRATION EFFICIENCY
Higher efficiency using administration and automation tools vs. limited administration tools
1 Workflow Automation: MicroStrategy System Manager
merges different administrative tasks, such as creating users,
starting or stopping server, and many others into a single
workflow. It is also possible to combine non-MicroStrategy
processes into the workflow.
No Workflow Automation: BusinessObjects
does not provide any workflow automation tool.
2 Object Management and Migrations: MicroStrategy Object
Manager facilitates metadata life cycle management. The
presence of a single metadata repository increases change
management accuracy and efficiency.
Object Management Available: SAP
BusinessObjects Lifecycle Management is a
web-based application that allows migration of
BI resources from one system to the other.
However, it does not automatically
comprehensively check for dependencies when
changes in metadata objects occur given its
inability to support metadata content across the
entire product set.
3 Automated Integrity Checking: MicroStrategy Integrity
Manager automates the report comparison process and verifies
the consistency of reports by comparing both the SQL and the
pixels of copies of reports and highlights any inconsistencies.
This automated process eliminates the need of manual
consistency checking, resulting in huge time savings while
upgrading to a newer versions or during object migrations.
Limited Integrity and Regression Testing:
BusinessObjects provides some data integrity
checking. However, the limited granularity and
flexibility of the tool does not allow the
automation of highly parameterized reports that
examine different scenarios based on the
prompt answers.
4 Automatic Creation of Most Useful Cubes: Cube Advisor
recommends and automatically creates an optimal set of In-
memory Cubes based on usage patterns of users accessing the
BI system. This process considerably reduces administration
workload and provides an efficient way to quickly improves
response times of the most time consuming and frequently
accessed reports.
No Support for Automatic Creation of Cubes:
BusinessObjects does not provide any Cube
Advisor tool that would recommend in-memory
ROLAP cubes to reduce database processing
and response time for BI applications.
5 Automated Command Line Scripts: MicroStrategy Command
Manager reduces repetitive and time consuming administrative
tasks through automated command line scripts.
No Automated Command Line Scripts for
Administrative Tasks: BusinessObjects does
not provide a comprehensive command line
administrative tool for high volume tasks across
the product set, making administration across
several departmental BI applications more time
consuming.
10
17
BUSINESSOBJECTS’ LIMITED
ADMINISTRATION

DEPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY
BI on-premises or in the cloud
1 Deploy Platform On-Premises or in the Cloud: The platform itself can
be deployed both on-premise and in a traditional software model or
through the Cloud environment. MicroStrategy Cloud offers a platform-
as-a-service (PaaS) offering which includes a MicroStrategy BI service,
plus the option of adding integrated data warehouse and data
integration capabilities.
No Integrated PaaS Option: SAP BusinessObjects only offers its
enterprise BI cloud solution through partners. So whatever services
are offered (support, payment model, data integration, etc.) depends
a lot on what the partner is able to provide.
2 Access Data Instantly via MicroStrategy Analytics Express (SaaS):
Business users can instantly connect to their data and explore it using
powerful and intuitive data visualizations. No installation required as all
capabilities are available through a zero-footprint Web based SaaS
solution.
Supports a SaaS-based BI offering: SAP BusinessObjects now offers
SAP Lumira Cloud (released July 2013).
3 Securely Explore Data using the Free MicroStrategy Analytics
Desktop: MicroStrategy offers a free solution to explore your data
securely using a desktop application. The free solution not only allow
accessing Excel Files, and Flat files but also all major databases and even
big data sources.
Restrictive Free Offering: SAP Lumira Personal Edition is available
for free, but only allows access to Excel data (CSV, XLS, and XLSX). In
order to connect to all major databases, including SAP HANA, users
have to buy the Standard Edition.
Run MicroStrategy
Analytics Platform on-
premises (PaaS)
Deploy secure, expertly
managed BI Platform in
the Cloud
Start exploring in the cloud
with the free MicroStrategy
Analytics Express (SaaS)
11
18
BI Platform Agile BI
Start exploring data with
free MicroStrategy
Analytics Desktop
Analytics Express

“BIScorecard is the only analyst firm that tests
BI suites hands-on, based on over 300 detailed
criteria, and with the customer perspective in
mind.”
BI Scorecard
INDUSTRY ANALYST
Get unbiased perspective from one of the top industry analysts – BiScorecard12
19
Source: BI Scorecard® Strategic and Product Summary – Q4 2013.
MicroStrategy vs. BusinessObjects
• No functional gaps, superior breadth
• Industry’s best architecture
• Highest-rated overall in self-service BI

MicroStrategy 9 vs SAP BusinessObjects 4.1

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